Crypticcanidae - Statistically Average Hound

i just think its funny that three out of the four dreamers that the demons use to power the fade islands during broken circle are templars. and the fourth is a mage whose nightmarish imaginings are just parroting the worst things mages are taught about themselves. isnt that funny

a lot of this has already been said probably but what keeps getting to me about the statements around the worldstate decisions is that aside from all the reasons it feels really shitty as a player coming from previous games, it erases the interconnectedness of thedas as a continent

putting together the choices from origins & inquisition, you can leave ferelden with a monarch who will leave behind no heir who at this point will be appearing less and less healthy each time he is seen in public. you can leave orlais with an emperor who has effectively gained this position by coup and garnered support on the promise of restoring orlesian glory through war (against ferelden AND nevarra. btw.)

but sure. let’s say that’s a peripheral conflict for the north. already stretching the limits of believability given how quickly tevinter slavers and antivan crows were able to react to the unrest during the blight but sure. let’s say they have bigger things to worry about rn.

let’s consider the divine election in trespasser then. any of the 3 divines can propel the chantry to the very brink of fracturing based on their approval. if they do manage to keep it united, then you can have a chantry under divine vivienne who empowers mages more than ever before under the chantry or divine leliana who has abolished circles entirely and opened the priesthood to elves, dwarves and vashoth/tal-vashoth. because of the timeskip this is now a state of affairs that has existed for a decade. there is no conceivable way that the social & political implications of this have not reached across thedas

there’s admitting you wrote yourself into a corner with the branching and need to do some retconning to stabilize the worldstates… and then there’s saying “that was all in the South. it doesn’t matter here.”

i know we joke about cis artists having the weirdest sense of anatomy, but also even when the anatomy is fine, no one seems to want to draw women doing normal things

ah yes because circles and templars under the control of the orlesian chantry definitely don’t exist in antiva, nevarra and rivain

Okay here’s what I was expecting from worldstate customisation:

Origins:

- gender and origin of the warden, so they could be mentioned offhand in a codex entry or a line of dialogue

- who they romanced, so it could be mentioned offhand or in a codex entry and, if Morrigan was romanced, she could have a line

- whether or not someone died killing the archdemon and who that was, to be in a codex entry or mentioned offhand, or possibly seeing their grave in weisshaupt

- whether Kieran exists and whether he had the soul of an old god, to have a follow up on the implications of that and to add depth to Morrigan

- who is ruler of ferelden, to be mentioned offhand or in a codex entry

Da2:

- gender and class of Hawke, so they can be mentioned offhand or in a codex entry and so can the appropriate sibling

- who they romanced, so it could be mentioned offhand or in a codex entry

- what happened to the surviving sibling, so it could be mentioned offhand or come up if relevant (eg if they’re a warden a possible brief cameo at weisshaupt)

- whether they’d sided with mages or templars, to come up in codex entries or offhand mentions, and to establish how Varric feels about mages because it depends on Hawkes choice

- whether they killed anders or not, so it could be mentioned in a codex entry especially if romanced

Inquisition:

- gender and race of inquisitor

- who they romanced, and the outcome of their romance partners personal quest, so that the route taken would carry through (eg pardoned blackwall vs warden blackwall)

- whether the inquisitor did the mage or templar route, and how, to be mentioned offhand or in the codex

- who was left in the fade, not necessarily to follow up on their fate but just so Varric could acknowledge if his best friend was presumed dead or not

- who is leader of orlais so that the ruler of the biggest country on the continent can be brought up at least in passing/codex entry, with possible cameo

- who drank from the well of sorrows, because yeah actually it is important which of these two characters is bound to the will of an elven god. Especially as it seems that one of them might now be said elven god. I’d expect this to have as much influence as Kieran’s existence did in dai, ie you still get to the same place but you have a slightly different route there. I cannot fathom how this isn’t relevant anymore

- who is the divine, to be mentioned in passing or in codex, but mentioned more in depth if the inquisitor romanced Cassandra who is now the divine because they have a whole situationship going on. It would come up if the divine was a mage.

- whether the inquisition disbanded or remained together as bodyguard of the divine. I honestly don’t know how this is a choice if the divine doesn’t come up

- inquisitors attitude to solas, with room for them to be very negative towards him on account of all the killing and murder and world destroying

You’d be able to customise this through character creator, and you’d be able to choose a default for each game seperately, so new players didn’t have to worry about the other games and people who only played inquisition could ignore origins and 2 and customise their inquisitor.

I don’t think this would have been unreasonable. Most of this is just for codex entries and offhand comments, and the bigger ones are inquisition choices. I get that they can’t have big effects beyond that. But the codex entries and offhand remarks are what we WANT. They’re what makes this world state ours. It would not have been difficult to incorporate most of this, and it would do so much for the depth of the game.

As it is, we have a major character who can’t even discuss whether or not she has a child because that wasn’t deemed important enough to include